125 gallon Miracles mixed reef

[BlueDevil]

Hello everyone! I figured I would quit procrastinating and use the COVID-19 lockdown to good use and finally make a post about my new build. This build has been five years in the making (planning) while my basement was finished. I have always wanted a large tank but could not have one upstairs due to the age of the home's construction. I wasn't sure if the floor would bear all the weight. I am glad I waited and took my time as I was able to get everything, well almost everything, just the way I wanted. So here goes with the picture heavy post!

The tank is custom built by Miracles Aquariums - a 60x24x20 tank with 3/4" glass all around and armored seams on the four corners. I ran into some issues with the first tank that was sent to me since the holes for the overflow were not drilled correctly. However, I cannot say enough good things about Derek at Miracles. He is extremely understanding and very easy to work with. After going over some custom overflow box options, we finally decided just to start from scratch. So, he ended up sending me a replacement tank. Errors are human, but what is done to fix them is what separates good vendors from the not so good ones. In that regard, my experience with Miracles was outstanding. The new tank came in perfect, and it is built like a tank. The build quality is top notch!

My build/equipment details as follows:

Tank: 125 gal Miracles custom built tank - 60x24x20 with armored seams and euro braced bottom. 3/4" glass all around with front panel starphire.
Overflow: 16" Synergy Reef Ghost overflow
Sump: 100 gallon Rubbermaid stock tank
Total system volume discounting for rock and sand: 140 gallons
Lighting: 3 x Radion XR30 G4Pro and 4 x ATI T5 (two Blue Plus, one Purple Plus and one Coral Plus) mounted in as Aquatic Life hybrid fixture
Skimmer: Bubble Magus Curve 9 Elite
Return Pump: Ecotech Vectra L2
Powerheads: 1 x Maxspect Gyre XF350 and 2 x Ecotech Vortech MP40 placed on the back wall for cross flow
Reactor: BRS Dual Carbon/GFO reactor
Heaters: 2 x BRS Titanium heaters (600w)
Dosers: BRS 1.1ml dosers for Alk and Ca
Plumbing: 1.5" drains and 2 x 1" return lines with randow flow generator nozzles on each
Controller: Apex Classic
Rock: Marco rock reefsaver dry rock
Sand: Tropic Eden mesoflakes

Stock list:
2 clown fish
1 pygmy cherub angel
1 yellow watchman goby
1 pistol shrimp
1 maxima clam
1 royal gramma basslet - new addition
3 female lyretail anthias - new additions
1 lawnmower blenny - to be added later
3 carpenters wrasses - to be added later
1 One spot foxface - to be added later
Assortment of cleanup crew

As far as corals are concerned, I don't have a whole lot currently in the tank. Whatever I have was moved over from my old tank. Some GSP, a couple of acans, a torch, and some assorted SPS frags is all I have right now. I hope to have those flourish as I add other corals to the tank.

The tank is located in the basement living room and the sump is in the adjoining room behind the tank. I love having a remote sump since it makes maintenance so much easier! Water changes now take just a few minutes. I haven't fully automated the water changes and still need to use a pump and a bucket but with a wide open sump, it makes the job easier. Not to mention, the tank side is extremely quite with no noise from pumps and other equipment.

I built the stand myself - my first foray into a stand build. It ended up being way overbuilt I'm sure but I'd rather it be that way instead of the other way around, especially with the amount of weight it will be supporting. The stand has one last thing left to it - I plan on putting a sea fan skeleton in the 'shadow box' cutout with a spotlight on it.

I set the tank up and had it running for the first time on 2/23/20 and cycled it using Fritz Turbo Start. I had never used this product but read some very good things about it. I have to say I came away mighty impressed. I moved the three fish I had in my other tank down to this tank 24 hours after adding the bacteria and not once did it even register the slightest bit of ammonia of nitrites. Over the course of the month, I have moved everything from my other tank down to this one and everything is doing well. The only coral that took a hit was a frag of a chalice but it still has some life to it and has its feelers out at night so I'm hoping it will rebound. I just got my results back from the first ICP test and other than a few minor corrections, everything looks to be in great shape.

So here are some pictures starting with the build phase and progressing onto some tank pictures I took a couple of days back. I documented everything; just hadn't started a build thread about it.

Thanks for reading my catch up story!

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Awesome build! Beautiful photos! Following!!

 

[Fourstars]

Beautiful job so far. Really like the rock work.

 

[Mastiffsrule]

Evening,

That is a great looking tank. The aqua scape is perfect. I’m also a big fan of the smaller angels. I also love the floors. I always check out the room along with the tanks


Put your build thread in your profile to get your badge when you get a chance.

 

[BlueDevil]

Hey folks! Firstly, I apologize for the delayed response. For some reason, I did not get any notifications for your replies. I have added a few more fish and corals since my initial post. I hope to get some more pics soon.

Awesome build! Beautiful photos! Following!!

Thank you!

Beautiful job so far. Really like the rock work.

Thank you! I really wanted to keep it minimal on this build as my last build ended up with far too many rocks to where I had to bend ad twist and turn to be able to spot my fish swimming around

Evening,

That is a great looking tank. The aqua scape is perfect. I’m also a big fan of the smaller angels. I also love the floors. I always check out the room along with the tanks


Put your build thread in your profile to get your badge when you get a chance.

Thank you so much! I love my floors Tile has come such a long way! It's great having tile where the tank is at so I don't have to worry about carpets or wood getting ruined from splashes during tank maintenance. Regarding the badge you mentioned, I do have one so I am confused what you mean? I got this badge from my previous build thread. Do I need to do something different now for this build?

 

[mclayj]

Beautiful system! Do you have any close up shots of the armoured seams? I just ordered a 48” x 26” x 20” tank with external overflow from Miracles and I’d love to see how he does them close up. Thanks!

 

[BlueDevil]

Beautiful system! Do you have any close up shots of the armoured seams? I just ordered a 48” x 26” x 20” tank with external overflow from Miracles and I’d love to see how he does them close up. Thanks!

Thank you! It reminds me to take some updated pics of my system. There have been lots of ups and downs since I set it up so lots to update.
As far as the tank is concerned you will love Derek’s work. It’s hard to get close up pics of the seams with water in the tank (so no inside seam pics) but here are a couple of pics of the seams from the outside.

 

[BlueDevil]

Its been months since I updated this thread, and frankly things have been so up and down that its been rather frustrating. Everything was going well in the tank for the first month post setup, and all the corals and fish were doing really well. I even ventured into adding a few SPS frags which were doing great for several weeks. Great color and PE. Then all of a sudden, out of the blue, one by one, all my frags started going downhill. They would to collect algae on the tips, which slowly suffocated them and all STN'ed on me. I even tried dipping them to no avail. During this time, my alk consumption was going through the roof (dosing 150ml per day of soda ash) to maintain Alk at 8.0 dkh. Now that should have given me some type of clue but I was totally baffled. I didn't see any precipitation on pumps, sump, sand surface etc. However, during a deep cleaning, I ran my fingers through the bottom of the sand bed and found lots of clumps of precipitated sand. Doing some more reading into this, I found multiple similar experiences with new sand, which can take a little while to build up the slime coating on it. 16 years in the hobby and still learning!

Fast forward to a couple of months back, everything had settled in and I was brave enough to add some more SPS frags. So far I have had zero issues with any of the frags and they are encrusting and growing really well. Starting to color up quite nicely as well.

Onto a different struggle now - for some reason, I have dealt with a lot of random fish deaths. I have lost 5 anthias, a foxface, a royal gramma and a Japanese Swallowtail over the past 4 months. In each case, there is no obvious reason for the loss. They were all swimming around just fine, eating well, and the one morning they were gone. None of them showed any signs of noticeable infections, or trouble breathing, etc. No aggression from any fish either. The other fish that I have left have been doing really well. About the only thing to note is that the fish I lost were all newly purchased. I did read some experiences about stressed fish due to complications in collection, shipping etc. caused by COVID so that is about the only thing I can think of. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated. I have rarely lost any fish in all these years and am quite lost as to why I am having so many issues with them lately.

 

[BlueDevil]

Here are some recent tank pictures. My full frame camera is on the fritz so orange filter cell phone pictures is the best I could do this time around.

And some top down SPS pics taken through a coral viewer

 

[mclayj]

Thanks alot for the pictures. I’m very excited for the tank. Planning T5/Radion hybrid light as well. just need to pull the trigger in the sump.

 

[BlueDevil]

A little bit of an update here. Everything in the tank is doing really well. Some of the frags are well on their way to turning into mini colonies.

Just this last week, I brought the T5 supplemental lighting back online. I only have them running 20 mins per day right now. And when they come on, my Radions drop down so the overall PAR is only increased by roughly 30.

Here are some full spectrum pictures I took the other day. Straight out of my cell phone camera with orange filter. No other edits.

 

[BlueDevil]

And here are a couple of pictures of two of my faster growing frags. One of the growth progressions is a little dated now.